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2504Chap11 7/4/03 12:41 pm Page 208 11 The Black Sea Economic Cooperation: what contribution to regional security?1 Panagiota Manoli The Black Sea region has been extensively referred to as a bridge, indicating its link with Europe to the West and Asia to the East. As a crossroad of geography, cultures and religions, the Black Sea region presents opportunities for both cooperation and conflict among the region’s states. Developments in this area cannot be viewed in isolation, but always in the context of events taking place in Europe and in Central Asia
Eurasian security governance has received increasing attention since 1989. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the institution that best served the security interests of the West in its competition with the Soviet Union, is now relatively ill-equipped resolve the threats emanating from Eurasia to the Atlantic system of security governance. This book investigates the important role played by identity politics in the shaping of the Eurasian security environment. It investigates both the state in post-Soviet Eurasia as the primary site of institutionalisation and the state's concerted international action in the sphere of security. This investigation requires a major caveat: state-centric approaches to security impose analytical costs by obscuring substate and transnational actors and processes. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon marked the maturation of what had been described as the 'new terrorism'. Jervis has argued that the western system of security governance produced a security community that was contingent upon five necessary and sufficient conditions. The United States has made an effort to integrate China, Russia into the Atlantic security system via the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. The Black Sea Economic Cooperation has become engaged in disseminating security concerns in fields such as environment, energy and economy. If the end of the Cold War left America triumphant, Russia's new geopolitical hand seemed a terrible demotion. Successfully rebalancing the West and building a collaborative system with Russia, China, Europe and America probably requires more wisdom and skill from the world's leaders.
, Turkey can equally be seen as a security ‘provider’. Since the Cold War in particular, Ankara’s diplomacy has increasingly reflected the complexity and diversity of Turkey’s geopolitical circumstances. For example, Turkey took the lead role in the establishment of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organisation (BSEC) in 1992, and the Black Sea Naval Cooperation Task Group (BlackSeaFor) in 2001. In late
weak political figure, but always a force to reckon with. Furthermore, Ozal did more for Turkey outside its borders than any previous leader, having gone abroad more than seventy times during his tenure. He was the initiator of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Region (BSECR or BSEC), the foundations of which were laid in June 1992 in Istanbul, during Ozal’s presidency, but were formally established only in June 1998, long after his death. Turkey, at that time feeling snubbed in Europe despite her contribution to the victory over Iraq, was keen
as it assumed the appearance of just another top-level bureaucratic process. Furthermore, these regional initiatives overlapped with others launched in the same areas by the Commission, the Council of Europe, the Black Sea Economic Cooperation forum, the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative and the World Bank, resulting in ‘cooperation fatigue’. These organisational overlaps also make it difficult to
(SCO), the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) and others – may eventually play a more prominent role than NATO or the EU in governing Eurasian security, but each is handicapped by a potentially debilitating heterogentity of membership (OSCE), exclusivity by design (CIS), a volatile membership (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova grouping [GUUAM]), disparate interests and expectations for the institution among the member-states (SCO) or a relative lack of legitimacy (BSEC). The overlapping membership of these Eurasian security institutions may